


Day 20: Staff

by CommonEvilMastermind



Series: Sollavellan Hell Art Challenge 2020 [3]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Minor Female Lavellan/Cullen Rutherford, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser DLC, crafting, solavellan hell art challenge 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:33:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23985367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommonEvilMastermind/pseuds/CommonEvilMastermind
Summary: After their breakup, Teva Lavellan is determined that all members of her party have the best equipment she can make them. Even Solas.
Relationships: Female Lavellan/Solas
Series: Sollavellan Hell Art Challenge 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1721170
Comments: 4
Kudos: 43





	Day 20: Staff

Spirits did not haunt him, as they did others. The songs in his bones were too old, too strong, too familiar - like hunting one of their own. Spirits would do that, of course, especially for a concept that was opposed to their nature. But the way he was, spirit made flesh in a long ago time - they did not hunt him so readily, just as the fennic would not hunt a dragon. 

Or perhaps it was a matter of control. Spirits sought out emotion, fed upon emotion, and that which he had was buried deep within his skin. So he was not a tempting target, nor an easy one, even for the hungrier spirits that even he would call _demon_.

Standing in the rotunda, brushes broken before him, he thought he would be safe forever from one particular strain of demon. After all, he had nothing to be proud of. Not any longer.

Not since the night in Crestwood when she had looked at him, barefaced, and he found he could not bring himself to tell her. Better heartbreak than disgust, better to run from her before she turned her face away. Which would be worse, her doubt? Or her belief? No. Better to walk away, fuel her anger. Sharpen it to a point and send her to Corypheus with all of the love that he had to guide her through safely. She would continue onwards. Better to leave now, to spare her his attention.

_Dread Wolf, look away._

When the dawn finally poured through the upper windows of the rotunda, he still sat looking at the brushes that he had damaged, the paints he knocked away. He should clean up, repair, start again - this one thing he had left to her, his legacy untouched by his other name, for all of the wolves that howled in the paintings. This was his gift to her, to Skyhold. Two panels left. One, the temple of Mythal, still half finished. Then, the last panel. Waiting. 

The scrape of a door - one of the servants, no doubt, or a scribe coming into the library. But the footsteps drew closer, not veering away, and he looked up. 

There she was, in all her glory. He thought, not for the last time, that she would make them a much better god than he. A bright one, orb in one hand and hammer in the other. Smiling.

"Solas?" she said again.

"Hello." That was all he could manage.

"You're not sleeping."

"Neither are you."

"I'm not a Dreamer."

 _You should be,_ he did not say. Instead he said, "How can I help you?"

"I'd like your input on your staff."

"My-" He glanced to the corner where it was lying. She had crafted it for him from everite, and the dusty blue length of metal was polished and gleaming. He had recently sharpened the custom-fit blade and oiled the leather grip she made, that fitted his hands exactly. It was capped by a shining white stone that always hummed faintly, legacy of the fade-touched material she had forged into its making. Now that he had... now that they were... she would not take it from him, surely? "It is in excellent condition, thank you."

"Yes," she spared it an approving glance. "That was a good one - but no, I'm talking about your new staff. I want your input on the design."

"I have no need of a new staff."

"You're getting one anyway." He opened his mouth to protest, "-No complaining. Everyone's getting new weapons AND armor for the final battle, and you're the only one left." She looked at him, something soft behind her matter-of-fact exterior. "I wanted to give you some space."

The last thing he wanted. His own fault. "You should spend the materials crafting one for yourself-"

"I did, and a new set of daggers. Your turn." She crossed her arms. "Staff. You can help me design it, or I'll make it for you. Out of dawnstone, with a plaidweave wrapped hilt."

Serviceable, but hideous. Pink with yellow plaid. A staff for a fool and a jester, no more than he deserved. "That would be fine, thank you."

"Ugh." She buried her hands in her hair, the short, layered style falling into further disarray. That hair - no matter the potions or pomades recommended by the courtiers of Orlais, her hair was the wild, untamed mess of a woman who had slept in the forge three nights running.

He loved her so dearly that it hurt.

"You're impossible." She brandished a roll of parchment at him. "Look, can I show you? Just, see...." She paused. His table was covered in brushes and paint, and his desk was worse, if anything. She opened the roll of parchment, revealing, not one, but four sheets, scribbled with diagrams. "Look. I found these sets of schematics that will channel so much more power. This one I got from one of Josie's contacts, it was drafted by a scholar in Halamshiral, before the Exalted March, and I've modified it since then. It's based on a design from the ancient elven-"

"No, thank you." She had done a reasonable job of replication, there were lines there that reminded him of a favorite staff he used in Arlathan. He knelt, examining her work.

"No?" She shook her head. "You and ancient things, you either love them or you can't stand the sight of them, and one day I'll figure out which is what. Okay, this one - I don't think you'll like this one, it's a necromancer's staff I made for Dorian - yeah, no. That's the new Wrath of Lovias, remember that staff? It got us through the entirety of the Darth and the Storm Cost, loved it so much I made a new one. It's the one I made for Vivienne - no, okay, okay. Right. Do you remember the Black Emporium?"

"Too well, thank you."

"It's only wildly dangerous if you don't know what you're doing, it's fine, anyway. That's where I found this." She drew out the fourth parchment. The design jumped out of the page at him from a bed of tiny, precise calculations - a three headed dragon. "It's one staff, one shaft, but the three heads - the blueprint shows they can be modified so each is attuned to a different element! No more fire _or_ cold _or_ lightning, you can have all three!" Her eyes were bright in the morning sun, her hands moving through the dust beams as she spoke, shaping the joy of her creation. "I figured it would be good for you, since I can't attune a staff to rift or spirit magic, and you tend to generalize when it comes to the other three schools. One day I'll make a spirit-attuned staff for you, but for the fight against Corypheus-"

"Stop," he said. Her voice cut off as if he had severed it with a knife. "Please. Spend no more time on me, I beg you."

"You're getting a new staff." She crossed her arms. So stubborn! "And you're coming with me when Corypheus comes, you're the only one who knows about the orb. I need you." He shook his head, unbending, and she blew a stream of air through her nose.

Then she smiled.

"You know, if you don't take it, then you won't be at your best, and if I fall and die you'll always wonder if you could have saved me if you were just a little better, a little more powerful, if you had just _listened_ to me-"

"Inquisitor-"

"Don't you _dare_ 'Inquisitor' me!" she shouted.

He could not look at her, but could not look away. She stared at her lap, hands curled into fists on her thighs. Fingers burned. Knuckles white.

The silence was so heavy.

"Fine." She stood up in one, fluid motion, and her face was hard. "If that is all I am to you. I order you to use the staff I make you in the fight against Corypheus."

He could not meet her gaze. "As you say, my lady."

"You're damned right, as I say," she muttered, gathering her parchment. "And go to bed. You'll need to be ready."

"As will you, my lady."

She gave this no answer, only turned and walked away. 

At the door to the Great Hall, she stopped. Did not turn around. She just said in a still, small voice, "Solas?"

There was a question there he could not answer. He said nothing.

The door closed behind her, and she was gone.

~

He did not touch it until the call came, though the velvet-wrapped bundle lay on his desk for a week, directly in his way. It was foolish. He should prepare with it, get used to the flow of energy, the nuance - but she had ordered him to use it against Corypheus and against Corypheus only. He did not touch it until that day.

It was beautiful. Carved from dragon bone, the three heads screaming proudly, each one attuned to a different element. She had been literate in the Trade tongue only, before she had drunk from the Well. This staff bore an inscription in the fluid script of elven, true elven, the language lost with the fall of Arlathan. 

The inscription said, "Ma vhenan."

He gripped the staff so tightly that his hands went numb. Then he went forward, into the world's ending.

~*~

"My Lord?"

"What is it?"

"There's - there's a package for you, my Lord."

"The shipment from the Dales. Put it over-"

"No, my Lord. It's addressed to you, my Lord, to be delivered to the Dread Wolf Fen'Harel directly."

At this he straightened from a table filled with maps and parchment. "Oh?"

Rivka nodded, touching her forehead nervously, grounding herself with a habit from a slave's brand that was no longer there. "It's in a dwarven puzzle box, my lord, and we can't get it open without the combination. But we had the spirits look at it, and there's no anger or rage or despair that we can find. There is..."

He waited for the woman to gather herself. "There is...?" he prompted.

"There is, in the package, my Lord, there is a great deal of laughter. And compassion. And, sir, it was signed - the note was signed, "Tava Lavellan."

Something blossomed in the stony wreckage of his heart. He stepped on it. "Bring me to it."

They walked through the corridors of his fortress, his cloak billowing behind him. Those he passed bowed with fear in their eyes. She had loved the people she gathered to her - she had always kept them laughing.

The store room was crammed but for an island of blank space in which lay a dwarven puzzle box, long and narrow. He knelt and held out a hand - Rivka placed a scrap of parchment within that said, as reported, _For the Dread Wolf, Fen'Harel, to be delivered directly._

What had been unreported was the nature of the post script. 

_With all my love, Tava Lavellan._

The puzzle box was new, freshly crafted, inlaid with rare woods and fade-touched metal. He picked out the letters hidden in the etching - the vhav, het, nun, nun, and pressed them in sequence. _Vhenan._

It didn't open. He sat with it, puzzling, turning the box over for an hour, before he found the little mem hidden under a false paneled inlay. _Ma vhenan._

The box opened.

And inside-

The Dread Wolf, Fen'Harel, threw back his head and laughed. He laughed wildly, uncontrollably, and all of his followers and servants edged away. He kept laughing and laughing until tears flowed down his cheeks, and still he did not stop. 

The Dread Wolf's fortress was different that day. 

Later legends told of Fen Harel's staff, of the wolf-head on top of it. Of it's rarity and power - no other staff in the world's history could draw on spirit energy, directly from the Fade.

What the legends did not say was that the wolf's head was carved in a dog-like smile, its tongue lolling out of its mouth, eyes crossed and slightly popping. The legends neglected the color - soft pink - or the yellow plaid wrapped around the hilt. Legends are not particularly good for accuracy in this way.

What the legends did remember is that the Dread Wolf carried that staff until the day he died in the arms of his Lady. It was buried with them beneath a great tree where they rested, side by side, for eternity.

And the spirits that always gathered around that place? Compassion and laughter. Wisdom and Pride.


End file.
